Entire text: http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20000717S0001
Some excerpts below,
-Todd
Monday, July 17, 2000, 11:22 AM ET.
Spec Lets Apps Span Industries By TIM WILSON
E-businesses next month will get their first glimpse of prototype
data-sharing and transactional applications that can operate not only
across companies, but also across industries.
The applications are based on ebXML, a proposed framework that bridges
ordering, billing and other information that is formatted differently in
various industries. Test applications will be on display at a meeting of
the Electronic Business XML consortium on Aug. 7 in San Jose, Calif.
[...]
Several companies, including IBM and Microsoft, are defining their own
XML frameworks for linking disparate e-business applications.
Microsoft's BizTalk already is being implemented by several companies,
including Dell and CapitalStream, for cross-industry ordering, billing
and other apps.
"We don't see BizTalk and ebXML as being in conflict," said Dave Turner,
Microsoft's XML evangelist. "We are defining a means for exchanging data
[via XML], but not the format of the data itself. We are not trying to
define things like business processes, which ebXML is trying to tackle."
BizTalk and ebXML are different approaches to XML messaging, but
Microsoft plans to address those differences when the ebXML standards
are completed sometime in the middle of next year, Turner said. "We have
customers that want to build interoperable XML applications today, and
that needs to be built on something that exists today," he said.
Meantime, the ebXML group hopes to complete its specs and
implementations by the second half of 2001. The group published draft
specs for its technical architecture, core components and business
process model earlier this month.
But some observers are skeptical of the group's ability to deliver the
specs on time, considering the glacial pace of international IT
standards efforts.
"I think 2002 is more likely than next year," said Tower Group analyst
Shahrawat. "They have a huge mandate that involves reconciling the
differences [in XML implementation] between industries, and they must
develop a template for working across industries. That will take a lot
of time."